


Such Bitter Sorrow

by Teyke



Series: Camelot? Camelot! [4]
Category: Avengers (Comics), Iron Man (Comic)
Genre: Angst, Homophobic Society, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 04:39:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11456184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teyke/pseuds/Teyke
Summary: In a year, Steve's destined to return to the future, leaving Tony behind. He doesn't have a choice.Parting's sorrow is only sweet when you may see your beloved again.





	Such Bitter Sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Set during the year that Steve stays in Camelot, as alluded to in the previous installments.

After the confusion at the knighting ceremony, Sir Steve Rogers raised many eyebrows in his first days at Camelot, especially when he quickly became inseparable from the king. Many of the younger men and women at court, commoners and nobles alike, quickly became admirers; for not only was Steve fair to look upon, but his prowess in battle was unsurpassed, and of course, he had the ear of the king. But others were not so pleased. For some, it was jealousy. For others, it was a purer love for their king, and a wariness of the stranger in their midst.

“He seems a good man, and if his choice of weapon is strange then I cannot deny that it is both honourable and effective,” said Sir Leon one morning at breakfast, with a careful look across the hall. Their king had joined the general breakfast this morning, as he had been more wont to do since Steve’s arrival, and where their king was, so was Rogers, seated at the king’s right hand. “But he has neither title nor patron, and skill at arms and rhetoric are no guarantee of a worthy heart.”

“Nor are blood or patronage,” said Sir Gareth, rolling his eyes. At twenty-four, he and his twin brother Garett were the youngest of those who had been knighted by Arthur, but he had loved the old king as dearly as any, and his expression went dark as he suggested, “Look at Mordred.”

There was a grave silence as the knights at the table bowed their heads in memory and grief.

After a moment, however, Sir Percival spoke up. “You speak true, and certainly I cannot argue against the old king’s loosening of the restrictions upon the knighthood.” This earned him chuckles, and a friendly punch in the shoulder from Gareth, for Percival’s ancestry was both well-known and common as mud. All who doubted his worthiness as a knight had been forced to concede it years ago, occasionally at swords-point. “But Leon has a point—a man’s worthiness can be judged to some extent by the worth of those who’d back him. Sir Steve is known to none, and he’s as tight-lipped about his past as they come.”

“Except perhaps to the king,” said Gareth with a grin, and earned himself an elbow to the side from his better-mannered twin.

“But that is the problem,” said Leon. “If Steve is true then I’ll grudge him nothing. The good Lord knows that he has lightened our king’s heart.” This was said with some shame, shared by the others at the table, for until Steve’s arrival and the change it had wrought upon their king’s demeanour, none had realized that their king had been deeply unhappy, a dutiful but lonely man made lonelier by his crown and his mad genius. “But that is my entire worry. It has been mere days and he is already further into the king’s confidences than even Bedivere.”

“The king is a good judge of character,” said Gareth.

“Even Arthur was blinded by the passions of his heart.”

That brought the conversation to another grim silence, as the two older knights recalled another king’s joy where e’re he looked upon the faces of his wife and her champion, and the equal adoration Arthur had received in return. But some strain had shattered those bonds years before Anthony’s arrival at court, robbing Camelot of both its queen and its greatest knight in one blow. Rumours whispered of scandalous betrayal, but could not agree whose; and Arthur had taken the truth of the matter to his grave. Even then, Guinevere and Lancelot had not returned, but perhaps they had not received word of his passing, or perhaps they, too, had perished in the long years of their exile. Or perhaps they simply could not bear to return.

It was Gareth, younger and knowing the tale only second-hand, who broke the silence this time. “You don’t really know that Arthur was blinded.”

“No, but nor do we know anything of Sir Rogers’ motives,” said Leon. “Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere loved Arthur. Does Steve return King Anthony’s regard, or has he less honourable motives?”

At this, Garett broke his habitual silence to speak for the first time that morning, and he was frowning as he did. “You do Sir Rogers ill, to speak of him so.”

“If I do, then it is for love of my king,” said Leon firmly, and reiterated, “Mark my words, the king’s regard for him is no idle infatuation. Should Rogers abuse that regard—”

“He’d find my sword in his gut,” said Gareth, both matter-of-fact and fiercely protective.

But Percival noted somberly, “That would not restore the king’s heart.”  


* * *

 

 

So it was that Sir Steve was closely watched that winter, by admirers and more skeptical parties alike. But there was nothing to be found to fault him for. True, he and the king bickered near-constantly, but it was the good-natured way of bosom friends, and on the two occasions when they quarrelled in earnest, they did so explosively and forgave each other just as completely in the same day. In time, the knights’ concerns eased, and when Steve rather spectacularly saved the king’s life at midwinter—from a goblin sorcerer who had stolen the form and manner of Sir Bedivere, no less—their doubts were at last laid to rest.

With spring came delegations. Arthur had united all the realms of Albion beneath his rule, putting an end to the constant petty wars; instead the lesser kings now brought their feuds before the High King to be settled, and so King Anthony was forced to spend quite a lot more of his time on his throne instead of in his workshop.

With the kings came their daughters, for King Anthony was yet unmarried. The sons came, too, since there were quite a number of unmarried daughters about. In summer Camelot was not only the political capital but also the romantic capital of the world, and this summer all the gossip was about King Anthony’s _scandalous_ relationship with his premier knight.

Sir Rogers went off to fight trolls that had ventured down out of the hills in a very bad temper, and returned a week later in a not much better mood, for all that those who had gone with him now looked at him with great admiration, and spread far and wide tales of his skill and bravery. He dueled several knights—not of Camelot—over private exchanges that neither party would disclose, and beat every one so swiftly as to humiliate them.

After the fifth such occurrence, Sir Bedivere cornered him in private.

“You need to stop this.”

Steve was changing out of his mail—which in truth he ought not to have bothered wearing at all, for the young Mercian knight he’d fought had landed no blows before being struck senseless. “Someone says words like that, they oughtta answer for them. And this seems to be the only way to make them, here.”

“Then you need to stop walking around by yourself where you might be drawn into conversation with them.”

Steve looked up from his gear. “Then they’ll just go and say it to someone else. Maybe someone who can’t spank them as well as they deserve.”

“If you’d stop baiting them, they wouldn’t say half as much, and they’d care even less than that about what men do privately between themselves,” said Bedivere, thoroughly exasperated. “Your companionship was always going to cause more interest in seeing the king properly married, but the way you’re flaunting it is only making it worse.”

“Flaunting—we haven’t flaunted anything!” said Steve, indignant. “We haven’t even kissed in public, for God’s sake.”

“I should hope not,” said Bedivere. “Have some sense, man. Not one knight of Camelot cares. But the High King has concerns beyond those of the King of Camelot, and you’re not making any of the negotiations easier for him. Either exercise control over your jealousy, or take yourself off to fight trolls for the rest of the summer. Every time you make a spectacle of yourself you give the king another headache that he doesn’t need.”

Bedivere took himself off then before Steve could reply, leaving Steve to fume to himself. Eventually a tardy page came by to inquire if Sir Rogers needed any assistance with his armour, but Steve was scowling so fiercely as he sanded his chainmail that when Steve gave no sign of hearing his first inquiry, the page took it as good fortune and fled.

Setting all his gear into order did calm Steve down eventually. Seeing Tony at dinner that night, the way he was perfectly polite to Princess Corriane (daughter of Bayard, the fourth most powerful king in Albion) but also perfectly remote, and the lines of stress that lingered around his eyes and probably hadn’t been there at the start of summer, Steve relaxed further, and perhaps felt some guilt. Then he felt angry at feeling guilt over not bowing to the whims of small-minded backwater bigots, and so it was just as well that he didn’t see Tony again until well after the feast had ended, and they were both down in Tony’s workshop, as was their habit in the late evenings—for Tony, alone among the kings of Albion, did not drink, and this left him a great deal of free time after nearly every meal.

The habit and the company both soothed Steve, until for the first time since he’d woken up that day he felt calm. He sketched with chalk on slate for a time, erasing as he saw fit until he was satisfied, and then erasing the whole and beginning with a different pose or a different scene. A paper mill had been among the first things Tony had designed and had built, years ago, but the demand was still high enough that over the previous winter Steve had begun sketching with chalk and slate instead of wasting it.

Tony had no such compunctions, and paper covered his table. To be fair, the instructions he was writing out were already perfect; he’d worked them out in his head: metallurgy notes for his smiths, and instructions for molds, so that before the beginning of winter they could begin laying the new rail line to Essetir’s capital—one of the items Tony had been spending all summer pushing the other kings to agree to, and which every other person in the capital seemed convinced would never work in reality. Even his blacksmiths considered it folly.

Perhaps it was the stress of being continually questioned even by those minds closest to his own, for after a time Tony broke Steve’s calm by asking, “So tell me, do I get married?”

Steve looked up from the slate he was sketching on. He had to take a moment to pick an answer. “Are you really asking?”

“Of course I’m asking. Wouldn’t you?”

“We agreed you wouldn’t.” This was a bit of a stretching of the truth. Steve had told him about the uncertainty in modern temporal theories about how much change was required to split a timeline rather than just bend it onto a new course, and that causing too many changes would probably be unwise, and Tony had not asked further.

Until now. “Right. Sure.” But he didn’t drop it. “It was never going to be one of the local girls, though, was it? Some nice French princess, maybe.”

“A what?” asked Steve, confused, for when the Commonwealth of Europa had been established France had not yet existed. Now it never would.

“Frankish, my mistake. I wonder if she’ll care about other lovers as much as you do.”

Steve carefully set down his chalk and slate. The Erskine Serum, made available to every child in the Terran Union for the past century, not only ensured lifelong health, but also enhanced physical constitution, agility, and strength. Everything in the future was designed to be used by humans who were at the peak of what they could be. After less than a year, the fragility of the past still sometimes took Steve by surprise, especially when he was angry or distracted, let alone both. “Is there a reason you’re being a dick tonight?”

Tony had set aside his ink. Well, of course he would—one careless gesture might ruin hours of work, if it went all over the table. “As opposed to all summer, like you’ve been?”

“They’re bigots,” Steve snapped. “Maybe it’s beneath your notice, but—”

“Right, I haven’t noticed in eight fucking years!” Tony half-shouted, and then went still as his voice echoed back to him from the stone walls, far louder than he’d meant it to be.

Just like that, most of Steve’s irritation evaporated. Oh, he was angry at the idiots who viewed him as unnatural, and who would have done more than make underhanded remarks if they could. And he was irritated with Bedivere. But not with Tony. Autumn was swiftly approaching, and with it, the anniversary of Steve’s arrival in Camelot—and the Temporal Monitoring Agency would scoop Steve back up and leave Tony here, because without Tony here the timeline containing the TMA, and indeed the entire Commonwealth of Europa and the Terran Union, would never have existed. Tony had to stay here.

“I’ve disappointed about three dozen lovely ladies so far this year, forgive me for wondering if that means I’m going to end up forever alone,” Tony said, shifting as though the silence was pressing in on him. It kept the flippancy from being convincing. “But since we’re talking about dickishness instead, it’d be nice if you could stop glaring at my dinner companions over the entree.”

Had he been? Steve, remembering the evening, was forced to admit that he probably had been, at least on that occasion. The plural remark was simply exaggeration. But that was all beside the point. Steve stood, and made his way around Tony’s drafting table, coming around to sit on the bench beside Tony and wrap him in his arms. He had intended to say something, but instead Tony turned to meet him, and captured all his attention with a desperate, wordless hunger that left Steve feeling hollowed out and empty, long after everything was done and Tony lay sleeping beside him.

A few mornings later, after seeing off yet another delegation—for all were eager to be home for the harvest; the concept of an extended social season had not quite ingrained itself among Albion society yet—Steve said, “I could stay. If you wanted me to.”

They were standing upon one of the castle balconies—Tony’s own design; such architecture had not been popular before his reign—and quite in full view of a number of people. But the distance was enough that no one could hear them, so Tony leaned upon the railing and said, “No, you can’t. They’re going to scoop you up—you don’t get a say in it, you told me that.” That, Steve had reasoned, had been knowledge futuristic enough that it really wouldn’t hurt anything, and it wasn’t like he knew enough about the details to tell Tony much more than he could guess.

“I could come back.”

“You won’t.”

“I will,” Steve maintained stubbornly. “If you’ll have me.”

Tony laughed. “You really took that stupidity about marriage seriously, didn’t you?” In the light of morning, his despair of a few nights' past was well-concealed. Steve could only see it because he knew to look for it.

“I love you,” said Steve. “I’m serious.”

“You’ve got a duty to go back to.”

“And I can come back five minutes after they pick me up,” said Steve. “The war against the Skrulls was ending when I left, I bet they’ll sue for peace soon. After that... I don’t have anything tying me there.” This, too, he’d told Tony, after making him promise not to leave any clever instructions for fifteen hundred years in the future. One hundred and seventy years in survival sleep after ejecting in a damaged pod from a dying space ship—one that Steve had killed himself, rather than let it deliver its lethal payload—had left Steve without much except duty, and four years of modern interstellar war hadn’t changed that.

“Come back and drag everybody into a new age of tolerance, kicking and screaming,” Tony said fondly. He raised a hand to cup Steve’s cheek. “And get in all the history books. Steve, there’s no world in which you’re not a—a fulcrum. A legend. You told me what you knew about splitting timelines. You’d never manage not doing it.” And then, briskly, like tearing off a band-aid, “So, you’d come back, and one of me would be very happy, I’m sure, but another of me’d still be here without you, and _you’d_ be stuck in a backwards era where indoor plumbing is still largely regarded as magic. Not to mention all the other issues. Don’t do it, Steve.”

Steve reached up and wrapped his hand around Tony’s, then brought them both down, between them. “You’re not the boss of me,” he said, smiling.

“Sure I am. I’m the High King.”

“Of Albion. Which I’m not from. And you refused to let me swear the knight’s oath to you.” Grinning, Steve tugged Tony forward and off the balcony, inside where they were hidden from prying eyes, and, more importantly, had the full use of a very large bed. And for the next few weeks the subject was dropped.

But as the clock wound down to a deadline that no one except the king and Steve knew existed, they argued more—although perhaps, the court speculated, this was simply because they were together more often: as summer wound down so too did the summer court, until at last it was only the full-time residents of Camelot who remained in the city, although these numbers had been swelled by new scholars, tradesmen, knights, and wives. The king, therefore, no longer spent his dinners playing the polite host, and his premier knight no longer spent half his time glaring at young ladies of quality and their encroaching fathers. Instead they ate together, laughed together, and whenever one glared, it was at the other.

Then one morning the king turned the servants away from his chambers, and refused to allow entry to anyone. This was not a new occurrence, for occasionally the king was taken by the spirit of inspiration and could not be bothered to make his way down all the stairs to his workroom. Usually Sir Rogers would take it upon himself to coax the king from his workroom at least long enough to eat, or else would bring food in to him, but there was no sign of him that day. In fact, there was so thoroughly no sign of him that everyone soon realized that he must be cloistered in with the king, and no doubt had secured food from the kitchen in the very early hours before even the cooks were awake, and so there was no need to worry after all.

The next morning, the king came down to breakfast alone. This was unusual enough that Bedivere, seated next to him, inquired—very delicately!—after Sir Rogers’ health.

“He is gone,” said the king, and his face could have been carved from stone. “He has duties elsewhere, and they must be fulfilled. He could only ever remain in Camelot for a year to the day. So he told me when he offered me his sword, and I knowingly accepted it.”

Had not all of the dignitaries of the vassal courts left at the end of summer, the resulting explosion of gossip might have taken the roof off of the castle. As it was, it remained the primary topic of interest for the rest of autumn and all of winter. There was no consensus among the commons as to whether their king was speaking the truth, lying to protect Sir Rogers’ reputation, lying to protect his _own_ reputation—for even a beloved king may have his faults—or misled, wilfully or otherwise. No one else had seen Sir Rogers leave. His horse remained in the stable, so if he had left, it was on foot. The cleaning of his quarters revealed that he had taken only minimal equipment. When he had left, he had done so in haste and secrecy.

The king put on a stoic face, and answered all questions put to him levelly enough—although few would question the king to his face, and if they did they certainly remembered to be polite about it. But the king did not smile half so much, and when he did, those who knew him best saw that it never reached his eyes.

Then spring arrived, and the Normans attacked in force.

So began the War of Foundation.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Welp, I don't think 'The Quest for the Cosmic Cube' is gonna get completed. But this prologue seems to stand on its own well enough, and hey, moar Camelot angst! I love me some angst. So I thought I'd toss it out there.


End file.
